Out of Chaos an organizing newsletter

Express Yourself

My daughter is doing an arts program this summer, the first week she shared with me that she felt the other kids in production design were better at sketching than she was. I pointed out to her that while she might not have spent as much time putting pencil to paper as some kids, she has fully mastered the art of eyeliner to skin (not easy!) I said was sure that she would adapt to her new medium quickly, and she has.

All of this made me think: we all express ourselves in different mediums. So many of my clients are like my daughter, they are their own canvases… their makeup, hair and ensembles are artfully composed, but maybe they haven’t quite mastered the canvas that is their home. The question is, how can we organize with the goal of making our homes express who we are?

We all know the person whose apartment is smaller than ours who, with a limited budget, is able to make every inch of their space an expression of their creativity and style.  In other cases, someone breaks all the rules, they have tons of books, or a million pots hanging on their wall (Julia Child!)… but it works.

We all respond to homes that reflect the passions and style of their occupants. What are your passions? What do you want to express?

When you look at your apartment, what isn’t ‘you’ or what is sending the wrong message? Is it a piece of furniture your mother-in-law foisted on you? Is that pile of papers expressing that you can’t keep up?  Was the neutral color scheme something that felt sophisticated ten years ago, but seems drab to you now? Letting go of things that don’t serve our vision of who are and the setting we want to evoke is the most important step towards making your apartment into the home you’ve always dreamed of.

Sure, that piece of driftwood you dragged up from the Hudson takes up space, but it is beautiful to you. But if it is buried behind boxes of files from your old job that you’ve been avoiding for 2 years, it isn’t the driftwood that needs to go, it’s the files. Maybe you do need to save some of those papers, but you’ve been avoiding buying a file cabinet because you think they are ugly. We all want to be the person who lives in a loft with a big piece of driftwood and a few seashells, but in reality, we have papers, don’t fight reality- you’ll lose. Instead, buy a bright red file cabinet and use it as a pedestal for your piece of driftwood. Just make sure you go through the papers before you buy the file cabinet, so you know how much space you need.

Organizing isn’t just about decluttering. It is also about expressing ourselves and creating the homes we want to live in… and that is an art worth mastering.